Misjudgements
by Joan Milligan
Summary: Zub zero temperatures will wreak havoc on your abrasive relationship. Shameless Six fluff.


Author's Note: Immediately post _Attack of the Cybermen_, because I love Six and Peri and you can't stop me. Nyah.

He has blue pajamas. Adore him.

(Psst, anonymous reviewer: if you don't leave a name in your ConCrit, I can't thank you for it properly!)

* * *

He's got a wretched cold and like the stupid stubborn alien _man _he is he wouldn't admit it. There's no point talking to him about it, Peri thinks. He'd had it for days now, ever since Telos, and all he'd done about it was drink even more tea and be even more irritable and, for a briefly horrifying while, have her convinced that he was going to litter the TARDIS with used tissues, because it just seems so very in-character. He doesn't, though, he's got a ghastly multicolored handkerchief and it's almost as though he's making an effort not to fuss over himself, although he won't fool Peri. Suffering hero acts, it's the Doctor's specialty. 

There's no point talking to him, of course. He'd only let her know in no uncertain terms that Time Lords are not prone to such _human _vulnerabilities (she can just hear it now) and if his educated explanation is being cut short by a gasping fit of sneezes, well, it's only because they ought to _clean up _better around here. Doesn't she know him by now? Then he'll turn round and go back to spreading germs all over the console. She can just see it.

Besides, he's in one of his moods again. And Peri knows all about his moods. Noisy, boisterous and a little bit mad, that's her Doctor, lecturing her about the importance of bouncing back and keeping her spirit (sniffling miserably). He'd taken her to the ocean planet of name-she-can't-pronounce and gallantly suggested she have some fun in the sun (he'll be right behind her, albeit shivering a little). Not worry her pretty little head over such dreadful things as Cybermen and semi-extinct species. That's her Doctor, never one to be put down by such little things as a horrid head cold and close brushes with death and doomed planets.

Peri decides to defiantly take him up on his offer and spends the day floating on her back in sun-warmed water, trying to relax and think. The Doctor doesn't join her, of course, just pokes his head out of the TARDIS a couple of times, coughs something about urgent repairs and retreats hastily. Well, good for him for managing to get rid of her. But that is, again, just the Doctor: topple a government, save a world at the price of some lives, then shelve his somewhat traumatized companion off in some vacation planet and sulk in the TARDIS all alone.

Repairs. Right. Not so alien now, are we, Doctor?

She comes back after the glorious blue sunset that this world has with her hair full of salt, towel draped across her shoulders, and the TARDIS is oddly quiet, which is strange since she expected to find him tugging at wires and kicking the walls and ranting hoarsely. It's probably his favorite pastime besides sniping at her. She takes a long luxurious shower and decides not to stop by anywhere before going off to her room to sleep, because finding her room can take a while. Like Doctor like TARDIS.

It was a good day on this glorious, warm planet, the polar opposite of Telos, and she doesn't plan to let it be ruined. But passing through a corridor, she winces hearing what is almost definitely the Doctor snoring. He's loud even in his sleep.

So she pushes the door open just a crack and tiptoes into the room, reveling in the chance to look over the Time Lord when he is, for once, not looming over her, and there he is. He'd built himself something of a nest, Peri observes, the bed is effectively a pile of blankets and there is her Doctor, curled up in them wearing blue pajamas and still half-holding an open book with one hand. His mouth is slightly open and he looks sick and boyish and sad. The bedside table is remarkably neat, ghastly handkerchief, cup of tea with lemon, the alien cousin of a thermometer, a little plate with the remains of the chocolate cupcake that is the Time Lord choice of comfort food.

The Doctor shifts in his sleep, twitching like a dreaming cat. He whimpers a little.

And quite suddenly, Peri feels very bad. Very, very bad. The kind of bad she rarely has any call to feel, the kind of unappreciative, unfair, shameful, leaden bad that settles in her stomach, the uncomfortable weight of a misjudgment.

She creeps closer, as silent as she'd ever been. He shivers; she doesn't need any alien thermometers, she does as sensible human instinct says and pulls a cover up and arranges it neatly around him. On second thought, she makes the surprisingly brief trip to the kitchen and brings back another cupcake.

On a third thought, she leans in to brush matted curls away from his eyes and pulls up a chair and sits down next to his bed.

She ends up falling asleep there and in the morning he has a few choice things to say to her about playing the voyeur on a very sick Time Lord and she has a few choice things to say to him about sound-proof walls. But the normal bite returning to his voice means that he's definitely feeling better. And in a way, Peri does too.

* * *


End file.
